At the same time that America was collectively losing our shit and screaming “what about the children” because some kids up way too late may have seen a breast for the first time in, I dunno, since the last time they saw mom naked around the house after showering or while changing or slipping into a swimsuit on vacation, we were raining down millions of tons of ordinance on a nation because some crackpots in another country attacked us, and I was cheering the policy.

Spent the whole night icing and elevating the knee, and, as a survivor of a number of knee injuries over years of soccer, lacrosse, the military, and general clumsiness, it’s starting to look like I didn’t just stretch the ACL, but I may have shredded it and there may be damage to the patellar tendon and the IT band. Again, just self diagnosing, but this ain’t my first day at the rodeo and I did drive myself to the hospital after shredding my shoulder in another pet related injury, so while a commie liberal cat lover and criminally accident prone, I’m not a total Nancy Boy.

At any rate, it’s immobilized and I have had frozen veggies on it almost all night, and usually after a couple of hours if it is just a strain it will start to calm down a bit, but this one isn’t. On the up side, I am using the walking stick Walt bought me, so that is cool. When I take the brace off, though, I can see the bruising, so I’m reasonably sure that come Monday or Tuesday, I am going to cover my annual insurance deductible.

Having said all that, while I was sitting here motherfucking everything and being generally pissed off about the situation, I was stationary (more so than usual, because it hurts to move) and I had time to think. And I reflected on this. Here are some of the changes brought about by the ACA aka “OBAMACARE”:

My knee hurts like hell, and maybe I am a strange breed, but I can deal ok with physical pain. Yeah, it hurts, and I bitch about it and drama queen it up when I can, but seriously, just follow the old comedy routine and don’t do whatever you are telling the doctor it hurts to do when you do it. But there was nothing worse in my life than the summer I sat, cringing in horror, taking cold showers every twenty minutes and hugging Lily underneath the comforter while I went through multiple panic attacks every day before having my my Generalized Anxiety Disorder (and other things) diagnosed and started to receive help.

Which I did, because I had insurance. So yeah. The Health Care website roll out sucked. My knee hurts.

But let me regain some fucking perspective, and think how lucky people are now compared to just a few years ago. And again, those of you who are in the know will back me up- I will take a bum knee over the psychic pain that who knows how many people went and go through without help. And now they don’t have to. Shit is still fucked up and bullshit, but it is getting better.

So if you wouldn’t mind, please pass me the frozen peas. The spinach is getting warm.

This is one of the things I hate about getting older. I’m realizing I just have to face facts and get on a regular schedule. The way I am living now just isn’t working- I was totally ready to go to bed a couple of (LOVE YOU EEMOM) hours ago, but I got wrapped up in this shitty trash novel and petting Lily, and I said to myself I’ll just stay up and read a couple more chapters and then go to bed. And I am not kidding, it’s a Ludlum, the Sigma Protocol, and the only reason I am reading it is because my uncle dumped a bunch of them on my mom to give to the County library and she was convinced I would read some of them and insisted I take a few. I fought her, but eventually took them and they sat in the back of my car for two months. I finally took them out when I had to move some stuff to move, and they sat on my garage floor for a while. I was down there this morning grabbing something, it caught my eye, and I started to read it.

So now I passed my sleep window, and am totally mentally ready for bed, all the animals are ready for bed, I’m too tired to even watch tv or have a twitter war with Erick son of Erick (which I did a little bit ago), and I guess my only recourse is to listen to this Daft Punk album again on my earphones.

Oh, and as to the title of this post, it is a drag getting old, but the reason that song has been in my head is I was talking to a friend who has a 10 year old daughter who is a ball of energy, and she was talking about how she sometimes wishes she was on xanax or something to deal with the rougher days when her daughter was acting up, and I mentioned that’s nothing new, and in fact the Stones were singing about it before both of us were born:

When I pointed that out, she laughed, and mentioned she had heard the song 100 times and never knew that is what it meant, and I was sort of flabbergasted. The lyrics couldn’t be more explicit, clear, and easy to understand. And then I remembered that 90% of the population doesn’t pay attention to what they hear or read or see or experience, so I shouldn’t be surprised. I may be misguided and misinterpret things and make bad decisions (for decades on end, I might end), but at least I notice things, so I guess I got that going for me. I guess the life lesson in all of this is that in life, much like music, people move to the beat of the drum.

https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpg00John Colehttps://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpgJohn Cole2014-01-29 03:28:112014-01-29 03:29:15What A Drag It is Getting Old

Sitting here reading a garbage Ludlum novel with Lily on the lap and listening to the Daft Punk album (I really, really liked that performance on the Grammys so I dl’d it), and I looked over on the couch and saw this:

All pet owners will know exactly what I am talking about right now, because when you lean over and see fluffy adorableness like that, you are immediately hit with two competing thoughts:

1.) I want to rub that.

2.) I know if I rub that, it is going to ruin the moment for him.

So basically, what I am confronted with is the cat petting version of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. I know it is going to be temporarily awesome to just throw my hand into that warm floofy belly, but if I do, I will change the dynamics of the situation forever.

And so I sit here in silence, suffering, knowing how good it could be to grab a handful of that furry gut but not wanting to interrupt Steve’s bliss for a fleeting moment of personal pleasure. And now I can go to bed happy, having not done a god damned thing or sacrificed one bit for my fellow man, but wholly convinced I am an awesome person because I didn’t fuck with my fat cat.

Having said that, I’ve spent a lot of time studying groupthink, and I have had employees in the past in both the “real” world, in academia, and in the military when I was a squad leader, so I know all about the concept of mind guarding and keeping info from the boss and the uncanny ability of employees to fuck up the simplest of things without any recognition of the depth and breadth of what they have just done. In this case, though, Christie presents himself as a hands on guy who is in control of things (that was him walking around after Sandy in a hard hat with Obama, wasn’t it), so that shit just doesn’t fly. He spent hours with these people every day. Either he knew or he is the most incompetent executive ever.

Second, this whole thing with that young, blonde, long-term rightwing aide who got run over by the Christie bus just reminds me of another young blonde female who was also a vicious political hack- Monica Goodling. I simply don’t remember so many vicious female political hacks when I was younger. There was always Phyllis Schlafly and Anita Bryant, but, it just seems like there are so many more female political hacks than before. Not that they outpace the male political hacks by any measure.

Finally, what I really don’t get out of this whole thing is what was the fucking point of it all? It doesn’t matter if Christie was involved or not, what was the fucking point? All it was was a dick move that fucked over a lot of people. No political point was made (until they got caught). No one on the bridge stuck there for hours thought “Well God Damned. I’ll not vote Democrat again.”

It was just pointless dickish idiocy. Which, I guess, isn’t so far removed from the House GOP voting 38 times to repeal the ACA. So I guess, If you look at it holistically, the whole damned thing makes sense after all.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

*** Update ***

I’d also like to be the first to note that this is the second Republican Presidential/VP hopeful in the last few years to have problems with what we shall call a “Bridge to Nowhere.” If I were Christie, I’d personally shoot anyone who mentions the term “Appalachian Trail” within 100 yards of me.